Morus rubra – Red Mulberry – 1-Quart

From Sternberg and Wilson’s Native Trees: “Unlike its weedy exotic cousins, which neither receive nor deserve much respect in horticultural circles, our native mulberry is a handsome, unaggressive forest tree. It inhabits rich, fertile, mesic forest soils, rather than the sidewalk cracks favored by the exotic species, and becomes a vase-shaped spreading shade tree in the open, reminiscent of a small American elm.”

The fruits are tastier than exotic mulberries and are a bird and human favorite. For fruit production, plant a few trees because individual trees are either male or female. Most of our trees are too young to have flowered so we generally don’t know if a particular tree we are offering is male or female.

Red Mulberry is native to New York and Ulster County – its stronghold is the central United States – from New Jersey to Kansas south to Texas and Florida. It becomes less common northward. Over most of this wide range it encounters the introduced White Mulberry (M. alba) and the two trees hybridize. In fact it can be difficult to find non-hybrid trees in more northern locations in the wild. We’ve been unable to find any pure red mulberry trees in the wild to collect seeds from for propagation. Moreover, all trees we’ve obtained from other growers, labeled M. rubra,  have turned out to be either M. alba or hybrids. 

Recently though we found a grower in northern Mississippi that is offering the species and is aware of the hybridization problem. They are collecting seeds from wild areas away from human habitation and are confident their plants are pure M. rubra. We’re going to get in some of their seedlings, evaluate the botanical traits that can be used to distinguish species from hybrids and hopefully they check out and we’ll be able to offer them Summer ’26.

There may be some concern that a tree from northern Mississippi may not be cold-hardy here in New York. We will also evaluate their cold-hardiness winter of ’26, but at this point, yes it will be taking a chance to plant them in 2026. Though since our climate is warming we think it’s increasingly likely that trees of a more southern provenance have a good chance to be viable in New York.